An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
MARKETING FOR CONSERVATION SUCCESS
AN EASY-TO-USE-WORKBOOK
FOR MARKETING
CONSERVATION SERVICES
PRODUCED BY
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CONSERVATION DISTRICTS
IN COOPERATION WITH
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STATE CONSERVATION AGENCIES
USDA NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE
1994
All programs and services of these groups are offered on a non-discriminatory basis without regard to race, color, national
origin, religion, sex, age, marital status, or handicap.
1
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction to Marketing...... 2
SEVEN PHASES OF MARKETING
Phase1–Identify Critical Issues...... 4
Phase 2–Develop Alliances and Determine Your Role...... 7
Phase 3–Define Customers...... 11
Phase 4–Identify Customer Needs...... 13
Phase 5–Set a Strategy and Action Goals...... 18
Phase 6–Develop and Activate the Marketing Plan...... 21
Phase 7–Evaluate Your Marketing Effort...... 23
Appendix A: Marketing Guidebooks...... 24
Appendix B: Blank Worksheets...... 25
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
INTRODUCTION
TO MARKETING
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
More than ever, our communities, state leaders and national leaders look to the partnership of conservation districts, state conservation agencies and the Natural Resources Conservation Service for help. They understand that our technology and conservation programs offer practical, proven solutions for resolving environmental issues in today's dynamic world.
But today's world of tight budgets and a wider diversity of people who are interested in our work, requires more creativity in how we work with people–our customers–to meet their needs.
The benefits of our technology and programs, and how they help solve environmental issues, must be stressed in different ways with many types of customers-agricultural, environmental, legislative, business and others who can benefit by working with us.
This Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services will help the conservation partnership meet customer needs through "marketing."
OBJECTIVES OF THIS WORKBOOK
The purpose of this workbook is to provide the members of the conservation partnership at the local level with the tools needed to:
- Understand and use the marketing process
- Develop or improve marketing skills and techniques through case study examples
- Develop marketing plans for promoting our technology and conservation programs to help solve environmental issues
The real-life case study examples from conservation partnerships throughout the U.S. in this workbook will help local conservation district officials and em-
ployees, state conservation agency employees, state conservation district association leaders and employees
from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) at all levels. Other partners can also benefit from this workbook.
WHAT IS MARKETING?
Mention the work "marketing" and some people immediately see smooth-talking salesmen in plaid sport coats persuading customers to buy a used car with slick high-pressure pitches.
Many others think of marketing as a complicated and confusing mixture of mind reading and magic wand waving to come up with an arbitrary plan of action.
Marketing, however, has nothing to do with these old cliché images. Marketing is NOT forcing unwanted products on wary customers. Instead, marketing involves asking customers what they need and providing products or services which meet those needs.
Marketing doesn't have to be a complicated procedure. Marketing is a straightforward step-by-step process which anyone can learn and use.
HOW CAN MARKETING CONSERVATION HELP THE PARTNERSHIP?
Marketing will help us:
- Meet customer needs
- Strengthen the capacity of the conservation district, state conservation agency, and NRCS partnership at the local level
- Expand our conservation partnership to be more effective by forming alliances with groups who share our issues
- Anticipate and address conservation issues at the local, state and national level
- Deliver the right service to the right customer
- Increase public support
The sample worksheets with case study examples will guide you through a seven-phase process to develop an effective marketing plan. The blank worksheets in
Appendix B are for you to photocopy and use as you develop your own plan.
A thought: Marketing is a team effort. To get everyone involved, consider having a different member of the team lead each phase.
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
PHASE 1–
IDENTIFY CRITICAL ISSUES
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
Conservation programs developed in the past may not address all of the environmental issues your partnership deals with today. Therefore, determining your critical issues is the first step in effective marketing.
This phase of marketing will help you identify critical issues for your partnership and how you might respond to them.
WHAT IS AN ISSUE?
A conservation issue is any topic related to the conservation of natural resources that can affect land users or other customers of the partnership. The variety of customers your partnership serves will be specifically identified in Phase 3, so for now consider customers in a broad sense.
The issues your office deals with may likely relate to:
- A community issue such as how to improve water quality in a watershed.
- The partnership's voice on national/state/county issues relating to natural resource
conservation, such as addressing the issue of voluntary versus mandatory conservation.
- A Food and Agricultural Council's goal or priority, such as providing convenient one-stop shopping for farmers and ranchers.
- Pending national legislation that affects your customers, such as the rewrite of the Endangered Species Act.
Examples of possible responses may include:
- Educating interest groups concerned about water quality and securing their commitment to support your position on the issue.
- Bringing together agricultural, business and environmental groups to demonstrate the success of voluntary conservation programs.
- Focusing public attention on developing a proactive ecosystem management plan that restores a critical species through managing natural resources rather than eliminating the use of natural resources.
PRIORITIZE AND FOCUS ON ISSUES
Time and resources may not allow you to address all the critical issues you identify. Prioritize them. Select the most important issue first and develop a marketing plan focused on it. Then apply this same marketing process to your other priority issues.
TASK
Stop now and review the case study in Sample Worksheet 1. This case study illustrates the steps used to create a working list of the critical issues and possible responses to those issues. It features the activities of the Clallam County Conservation District of Puget Sound
in Washington state and its efforts to improve water quality and habitat for fish.
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
SAMPLE WORKSHEET 1
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
PHASE 2–
DEVELOP ALLIANCES AND DETERMINE YOUR ROLE
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
This phase identifies other organizations that might also be involved with your critical issues and willing to contribute resources. It also helps you define your role in working with other groups.
ADD TO THE PARTNERSHIP –
DEVELOP ALLIANCES
The partnership of conservation districts, state conservation agencies and the Natural Resources Conservation Service can benefit by forming alliances with other groups to tackle a common issue. For example, if the issue is water quality, these may be good groups with which to form an alliance:
- Trout Unlimited or the Sierra Club involved in streamside improvements on grazing lands
- A sustainable farming group interested in legume crops
- State fish and game wanting to improve fisheries
- Livestock groups representing ranchers and their efforts to be economically sustainable and environmentally responsible
GET INPUT FROM MANY GROUPS
The more ideas generated the better the chance for success, so include as many groups as reasonable and productive in an alliance. Share with them your response to the critical issue. What is their reaction?
INVOLVE INTEREST GROUPS
Special interest groups are a fact of life. Many groups exercise influence to accomplish their goals. Working together may help you both accomplish common goals.
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
TIPS FOR DEVELOPING AN EFFECTIVE ALLIANCE
- Talk with community opinion leaders and get them involved.
- Find out their views about your issues.
- Talk to community groups which have political influence. Learn their “hot buttons” and positions on key issues.
- Create a list of key contacts. This list may include organization leaders, media personnel, etc.
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
In order to work effectively with the groups in your alliance you must be able to see the issue from their vantage point, and to describe benefits from their perspective.
How can you do this? When possible, work with groups on their issues, and support their projects. This requires an investment of time, but can yield large profits in the form of mutual understanding and cooperation.
It’s important to know how the critical issues affect a potential alliance member in order to determine if they should be involved with you on an issue. Every member should have a stake in the outcome.
SHARE RESOURCES
New partners can promote your common goals, and also allow you to pool resources, which benefits everyone involved.
Think of community organizations, individuals or other groups that can contribute resources to resolving your issues. Resources can range from providing meeting space, to producing a video or publication, to providing funding for projects.
DETERMINE YOUR ROLE IN THE
ALLIANCE
After identifying new alliance members, it’s important to determine your role in this expanded effort to deal with your issue. This step will guide you in writing a role statement. It may be a good idea to have each of your alliance members write a role statement for this issue, too.
WRITING A ROLE
STATEMENT
A role statement is a type of mission statement specific to your issue. It explains your purpose, and defines who you are and what you will do regarding this issue. Your role statement should make it easy for people to quickly grasp what unique conservation role you play.
When writing a role statement, be sure to:
- Be realistic–Consider your resources and capabilities. You want to ensure success, so keep your limitations in mind.
- Be specific–Keep role statements concise and explicit.
A good role statement should:
Be short and to the point
Use everyday language (no jargon or technical terms)
Portray the character of your organization
Use action verbs
Following is an example of a role statement:
“We provide farmers with access to voluntary, affordable technology which can help them improve water quality.”
TASK
Review Sample Worksheet 2. In this case study, agricultural producers in the watershed from which New York City draws
its drinking water embarked on a bold new effort to reduce water pollution. Producers faced difficult choices. Strict regulations developed by the city and EPA; having the city buy farms and take them out of production; or forming an alliance with the city, environmental groups and many others concerned about the watershed to develop a voluntary approach to solving the problem.
The latter option was chosen. With conservation district leadership, 22 farm groups formed the Watershed Ag Council and began identifying other groups to join this alliance. The sample worksheet shows just a few of the potential alliance members.
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
TIPS FOR ESTABLISHING
YOUR ROLE
- Be inclusive. The entire staff, board and volunteers should be able to communicate about your role statement and what it means to the conservation partnership.
- Refer to the role statement over and over again. It’s a good tool for communicating clear and consistent messages to your customers.
- Be visible. Get involved and stay active in professional networks, clubs and trade associations in your field. Tell these peers about your important conservation role.
- Know the issues and take a stand. You are a leader and an authority in your area on conservation. Be out front.
- Deliver what you promise. Consistent and reliable delivery of your conservation partnership’s services is the most crucial part in establishing your role.
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
SAMPLE WORKSHEET 2
PHASE 3 –
DEFINE CUSTOMERS
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
After identifying the critical issues, finding new partners, and determining your role in the expanded partnership, it’s time to zero in on the customers who may use the services you and members of your alliance provide. Phase 3 will help you do this.
WHO ARE OUR CUSTOMERS?
A customer is any individual or group that can benefit from the services your partnership has to offer.
You may be asking, “Are they a customer or a partner?” The distinction between the two is not always clear, but if their participation results primarily in benefiting from the services of the partnership, consider them a customer.
You may tend to lump customers into categories–farmers, ranchers, environmental group members, etc. But a good marketing plan gets even more specific about customers. For a watershed where water quality is a priority issue, you may have these customers:
- Dryland small-grain farmers
- Irrigated beet growers
- Sustainable farmers using legume crops in cereal grain rotations
- Landowners with small acreages used primarily for grazing horses
- Wool producers
- Homeowners who install septic systems close to creeks
- The local Audubon chapter concerned about habitat enhancement
- A local native plant group wanting to establish natural areas
- Communities who store their water in reservoirs
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
Specific methods of customer “information gathering” will be covered
in Phase 4 of this text, “Identify Customer Needs.”
For now, just concentrate on how background information
can help you to understand and work with your customers.
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
Each of these customers has different needs. Talking with each is important. Remember that marketing encourages us to talk with others outside the partnership–especially customers.
TASK
Stop and review the case study in Sample Worksheet 3. It shows that some conservation districts have unique issues. Such is the case of the Santa Cruz County Resource Conservation District and its urban environment. There, improper road building techniques in mountainous, geologically unstable areas can cause fatal landslides and encourage the spread of wildfires.
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
SAMPLE WORKSHEET 3
PHASE 4 –
IDENTIFY CUSTOMER NEEDS
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
In this phase, customers tell you about their needs concerning the issue. They provide information that will allow you to test your response to the issue, if you have the right members in the alliance, if your role statement is on target, and what service you need to provide.
GOOD SERVICE
MEANS MEETING
CUSTOMER NEEDS
Marketing isn’t just for selling products in the business and manufacturing industries anymore. It’s a way of providing service based on customer requirements.
For each issue, you need to ask customers:
- What do they need to deal with this issue?
- Do we have a service that addresses their need?
If we do have this service, why aren’t they using it as we want them to?
- How can we make this service more accessible and convenient for them?
- How can we make them more aware of this service?
Table 4 on the next page gives you methods for obtaining answers to your questions.
REVISIT PARTNERS
After gathering information from customers and identifying their needs, ask yourselves and your partners these questions.
- Do we have services that address customer needs?
- Do others have these services? If so, are they willing to form an alliance to serve mutual customers?
- Does our conservation district/state conservation agency/NRCS partnership need to develop these services? Should the alliance develop these
services? How can we gather enough resources to provide this service?
- Is the possible response we wrote for this issue in Phase 1 still on target? Do we need to revise it to reflect customer needs?
An Easy-to-Use Workbook for Marketing Conservation Services
TABLE 4
INFORMATION GATHERING METHODSInformation
Gathering Method / Explanation
□ Personal
Interviews / One-to-one interviews need to be conducted. A loose series of question are asked and listening skills are used.
□ Focus Group / Assemble seven to nine people in small groups. A preset list of questions are asked. Quick method to explore attitudes and needs of people.
□ Survey / Question a sample of people in order to generalize responses to a larger population. There are many different types of surveys.
□ Personal
Observations / You continually make observations. If you attempt to be unbiased during these observations, they can be a valid method of gathering information. Written notes are a way of documenting your observations.
□ Direct Mail / NRCS’s Field Office Computer System (FOCS) enables use of a customer data base to pinpoint targeted group. Enables you to: ask for a particular action from the person, establish a dialogue by asking for a response, and offer satisfaction of previously stated need.
□ Printed Materials / Publications, library documents, census data, published data bases, personal accounts, journals, magazines, newspapers, etc. can all provide valuable information about your local area.
□ Advisory
Committee / Composed of three to six individuals who are knowledgeable members of the community. These committee members are likely to have a sense of community needs, attitudes, resources, and desired services.
□ Key Informants / Interview community members individually who have exceptional knowledge of community needs, attitudes and resources. These interviews are not conducted with a formal list of questions. They are unstructured.